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NEWS
Welcome to Freeciv 1.14 Thanks again to all our developers, who continue to work so hard. This release includes lots of changes, outlined below. Those who are interested in seeing the detailed changes should check the ChangeLog file. 1.14.2 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.14.1 *Important compile fixes for some platforms *Game balance adjustments: *#All buildings except wonders and space parts 30% cheaper *#Some wonders cheaper: Colossus, Copernicus, Isaac Newton's, King Richard's, Oracle and Shakespeare's *#Submarine has more attack and movement, and costs less *Reputation recovery fixed (now much slower) *A few other minor bugfixes 1.14.1 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.14.0 *The GTK+-2.0 client is now built by default. *Lots of improvements to the GTK+-2.0 client. *The GTK+-2.0 client should now compile for Win32. *Teams are supported. *Civserver now works on UTF-8 locales. *Lots of bug fixes. 1.14.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.13.0 *Unique city names, you no longer can name your cities the same, and you can enforce unique city names globally (optional). *A new map generator (generator 5) which creates pretty fractal maps. *You can load savegames from the server prompt. *You can save client commandline defaults. *Specialists are taken from content citizens first, instead of from unhappy citizens first. This makes it more difficult to quell unrest using taxmen and scientists. *You now start with no technologies by default, and angry citizens are enabled by default, although they will rarely make an apperance. *The algorithm used for calculating the effects of tax settings has been changed. It is now no longer possible to get 100% effect from 60% choice of tax goal. *A new, historically more correct version of the rulesets included. *There is an option to require several turns of rapture/celebration before it takes effect. See "show rapturedelay" in server. *The sequence of some end of turn activities have been regrouped. *Several AI improvements. It should now build and buy units and buildings slightly more intelligently. *Many internal code improvements that will lead to more features later. */fix and /unfix commands to stop modifications after game has started. *The server commands "rulesout", "log", "freestyle" and "crash" have been removed, while "rfcstyle" now toggles between rfcstyle and freestyle. *civ2 ruleset now more accurately reflects civ2 deity level defaults. *A truly massive amount of bugfixes. 1.13.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.12.0 *Citizen Management Agent (CMA) allows you to automate workers and specialists in cities. *Sound support has been added. *The new "isotrident" tileset has been made the default. The "hires" and "engels" tilesets have been taken out of the distribution but can be downloaded from the web page. *New city dialog in the gtk client. *Windows version of the client. It has improved connection dialog and supports loading and saving from the client. *GTK 2.0 version of the client. *The client will try to suggest names for your cities that correspond with what they mean. *Improved players dialog shows sortable and colored information, including the players' flags. *Server no longer takes the --server command line option, instead you can use the --info option to set the metaserver announcement text to whatever you like. The -a option when given to the client skips the connection dialog entirely. *A "wall" server command added which gives message to all players. *A new flexible timeout set through "timeoutinc" server option. *Leftover research bulbs will carry over to next advance. *Trade routes are more effective. *Units attacking ships in cities double their firepower, while defenders get only 1 firepower. *Helicopters defending against air units get 50% penalty, and have their firepower reduced to 1 against fighter units. *You can build city walls even though you have Great Wall wonder. *The Communism government's food cost in default ruleset has been changed to 1, while it has been changed to 2 for the Civ2 ruleset. *Stealth fighter and bomber now really are stealthy, and are partially invisible just like subs. Also, stealth bombers have increased their attack strength from 14 to 18. *Civ2 ruleset now has Fundamentalism. *Improved modpack abilities: The caravan ability has been split. New ways to calculate technology costs. Better documentation. Rulesets can specify starting techs. You can have more than one bonus tech. Split settler abilities. Buildings ruleset syntax has been significantly extended, but effects do not work yet. *Server option "tinyisles" allow 1x1 size islands and "separatepoles" allow continents connected to the poles *"citymindist" specify minimum distance between cities, while "notradesize" and "fulltradesize" regulate the trade generated by smaller cities. *You can turn on angry citizens with "angrycitizens" option. *Fortresses may give you extended vision. See watchtower options. *If you lose your palace, you get a new one for free in a randomly chosen city. This behaviour can be turned off with the server option "savepalace". *Rulesets are now loaded from inside the server through the "rulesetdir" command. *The limit on the number of nations that can be included with Freeciv has been removed. *The format of the isometric tileset spec-files has changed. *The map and ai code has been cleaned up significantly. *Translations improved. Added better support for plural forms. *Several bugs squished and a lot of work done under the hood. *For an overview of the remaining bugs please visit doc/BUGS. 1.12.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.11.4 *Internationalization extended. Still needs improvement. Current localizations: de en_GB es fr hu it ja nl no pl pt pt_BR ro ru sv. *Isometric view in gtk and amiga clients using the mostly civ2- compatible HiRes tileset. This is on by default, but the old non- isometric tiles are still available by giving a --tiles argument to the client, fx "civclient --tiles trident". *While planning a goto (after hitting "g") a line will be displayed showing the route from the selected unit to the mouse pointer. Hitting "g" will insert a waypoint at the mouse pointer. *The server now has readline completion. This works at all levels, fx "cu< TAB >" completes to "cut", and if there exist a player named "paulz" "cut pau< TAB >" will complete to "cut paulz". *Players can agree to give shared vision, which means that you automatically see everything the other player sees. *Layer view menu items allow you to only display some map info on the main map. Fx you can choose to not show roads. *The server will ping all connected clients and cut off those too slow to respond. *Smarter placing of partisans. *The server no longer automatically starts when the maximum number of players have been reached. *If commandlevels are used and the controlling player disconnects a connected player can assume the "first" level with the "/firstlevel" command. *"Restrictions and Limitations" section added to the README.ruleset *Caravans, diplomats and spies can move into allied cities. *Elephants, Crusaders and Fanatics activated in civ 2 ruleset. *The size of the city foodbox is now controlled by the ruleset variables "granary_food_ini" and "granary_food_inc". *Limit on number of improvement types in rulesets removed. *Capitalization is available from the start of the game in the default ruleset. (renamed coinage) *Cities can have 0 trade. (used to be at least 1) *Settlers can only be added to cities less than size 8, as in civ 2. *If you paradrop a unit into unknown terrain and the terrain contains an enemy unit the paradropping unit is lost. If you drop into terrain you thought was land, but which has changed to water, the unit is also lost. *diplomats/spies can't take action from a ship. *Refueling air units at turn update will refuel units with only 1 fuel first. Secundary criteria is unit cost. *Trireme loss percentage depends upon known technologies. *Leonardo's workshop will upgrade a random unit each turn, and not just the next one. *Allied cities count as friendly when determining whether a unit is being agressive. (gives unhappyness under some govs.) *Deserts are created primarily 15 to 35 degrees off the equator. *Only arctic tiles generated at poles. *The server will report when a new government becomes available. *Changed wording of message "famine feared" to "famine occured". New "famine feared" message just before food runs out. *"wonder soon build" message when another player is about to complete a wonder. *Players are notified when one of their wonders has become obsolete. *In the players dialog it is now reported which nations have an embassy with you. Your embassies are also listed. *Wonders being built are listed in the "wonders of the world" popup. *Server "save" command saves to < auto-save name prefix >< year >m.sav.gz if it is not given any arguments. *"quitidle" server commandline option makes server quit if there has been no connected players for the specified amount of time. *When turning on the autotoggle option existing human nations without a connected player will be put on AI. *Server doesn't block as long when writing to a slow host, controlled by variables "tcptimeout" and "netwait". *"savename" server variable controls the prefix of autosaves. *"allowconnect" server variable lets you control which types of players (new players; human players; AI players; dead players; barbarian players) can connect. *More nations added. *New maps in data/scenario: british-isles-80x76-v2.51.sav, iberian-peninsula-136x100-v0.9.sav, hagworld-120x60-v1.2.sav (earth map). *Amiga internationalization/localization. *Amiga client: history added to chatline. *Lots of bug fixes and code cleanups. 1.11.4 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.11.0: *Readline support added to the server. *May now disperse initial units over specified area. See "dispersion" server option. *May now arrange for first client to connect to have a higher cmdlevel than the following clients. See "cmdlevel" server option. *Save files now transparently (un)compressed when (loaded) saved. *Now requires a minimum number of ocean tiles to be adjacent to a land tile wished to be transformed into ocean. Default is 1. *Added Nuclear Fallout. Industrialization and population still generate Pollution. Dropping a Nuke generates Nuclear Fallout, which is distinct from Pollution. There is a new command to clean Fallout vs. cleaning Pollution. Fallout contributes to Nuclear Winter -- which also changes terrain, but tends to Desert, Tundra and Glacier. Added a new "cooling" icon to the info area to indicate the progress towards Nuclear Winter, and also an icon for Fallout on the main map. AIs are now more aggressive at cleaning up Pollution, but not Fallout. *Ported to OpenVMS. *Moved most of the dependencies on the "civstyle" server option to separate values in game.ruleset files. *Fixed bugs in "turns to build" displays. *Fixed bug whereby Diplomat/Spy investigations of cities did not reveal the correct supported and present unit lists. *Fixed multiple bugs in go-to code. *Fixed bug where starting a revolution, saving the game and restarting the server would allow switching governments without anarchy. *Fix bug that you could paradrop into cities you were at war with even if they contained enemy units. 1.11.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.10.0: *Internationalization extended. Still needs improvement. Current localizations: de en_GB es fr hu ja nl no pl pt pt_BR ru. *Added full Fog of War. Controlled by "fogofwar" server option. *Added explicit Diplomatic States between civilizations: war, neutral, no-contact, cease-fire peace and alliance. *Allow terrain changes to/from land/ocean. Default ruleset allows Engineers to Transform Swamp to Ocean and Ocean to Swamp. Also allows Forest to be Mined into Swamp. *Increased maximum number of players to 30. *Fortifying now takes a turn to complete (like Civ1/2). *Added correct Civ2 style of Apollo wonder (shows entire map, rather than just cities). Selected by "civstyle" server option. *Aggressive sea units no longer cause unhappiness when in a city. *Added Civ2 rule that firepower is reduced to 1 for both the defender and the attacker when a ship bombards a land unit. *When changing current research, if user changes back to what was being researched, the penalty is not applied (you keep all your bulbs). *Added pop-up of more details when clicking on info box in GTK+ client. *Improved the global warming danger indicator. *Added warning of incipient city growth. *The server "remove < player >" command is no longer available after the game has started. *Added "fixedlength" server option to make all turns exactly "timeout" duration. *The "timeout" time may be much longer (up to a day). *Added goto for air units. If destination is beyond range, they will stop in cities/airfields/etc. to get there. *May now select a unit by clicking on the unit pile display on the left. *Diplomats/Spies moving by goto now do pop-up the Diplomat/Spy command dialog when they reach a city. *Improved goto algorithm and implementation. *Help dialog displays which buildings an advance will obsolete. *Optionally show city food/shields/trade productions on main map. *Added server option "autotoggle", which toggles AI status on and off as players connect and disconnect. *Allow Hoover Dam to be built anywhere, to conform to Civ2. *Show turns per advance in Science Advisor dialog. *Improved map and unit movement drawing code. *Added "End Turn when done moving" local option. *City production penalties now applied more correctly. *Added Sentry and Fortify to Present Units' City Dialog pop-up. *More nations added. *Added a resource file for the GTK+ client. *Improved network code for more reliable connections. *Split nations.ruleset into individual < nation >.ruleset files. *Extended registry file format to allow including files and overriding entries. *Added --with-xaw and --enable-client=xaw3d options to ./configure script. *Lots of bug fixes and code cleanups. 1.10.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.9.0: *Internationalization extended. Still needs improvement. New ./doc directory for localized versions of README and INSTALL. Current localizations: de en_GB es fr hu no pl pt pt_BR ru. *Added Civ1/2-like Barbarians. Controlled by two server options. *Many more nations added. *Worklists -- Players can now specify a list of things to be built in a city. *The AI now utilizes diplomats/spies aggressively. *Added a variant (1) of Michelangelo's Chapel. *Initial rates after Revolution will try to maximize Science. *Rapture-triggered city growth will no longer empty the foodbox. *Map generator improvements:*Gen 1 hills more uniform north/south.*Gen 2+ will tend to make fewer length-one rivers. *Added unit-death explosion animation. *No longer will cities with exactly 0 (zero) production surplus be given a "free" shield every turn. *Command-line arguments made more consistent between server and client. *Caravans now provide a research benefit when initially establishing a trade route, equal to the monetary benefit. *Diplomat/Spy changes:*Changed all actions to more closely conform to Civ2 rules.*Changed "diplchance" to be %-chance of success. Used in many ways.*Diplomat/Spy may attempt action with any movement left.*Added "At Spy's Discretion" selection to steal and sabotage dialogs.*Allow Spies to steal tech from a city more than once (gets harder).*May only poison towns of size greater than 1 (one).*May only sabotage units that are alone on a square.*When a city is subverted, only nearby units change sides.*Veteran status improves defense against other Diplomats/Spies. *Added production display of number of turns remaining to build. *Small, shield-like flags tilesets (trident_shields, engels_shields). *Airbase changes (for Civ2 compliance):*Ground units can attack Air units when they are parked on an Airbase.*Units are defeated only singly when on an Airbase (like a Fortress). *Revised and improved the server 'help' command. *New intro graphics. *Ships may now have their movement reduced after a combat in which they are damaged. *Added display of production values to main map "city tiles" display. *Increased the Add-To City size limit to 9 to conform to Civ2. *Settler's "Connect" feature -- Automatically connect two points with Road, Railroad, Irrigate or Fortress. *Several AI improvements. *New ruleset support for CITIES, most notably cities are now drawn in different sizes and styles. *Allow specifying unambiguous player name prefix, instead of full player name, for server commands taking a player name argument. *Added multi-client configuration support. *Added 'read' and 'write' server commands. *Added "best nation" column to Demographics report. *Changed Fighters and Stealth Fighters to not cause unhappiness (Civ2). *Cities on mountains will produce an extra food (Civ2). *Fixed bug where Lighthouse was not producing veteran sea units. *Ported to Amiga. (This is not included with a "distribution"; get it directly from the CVS < http://www.freeciv.org/contribute.html#SetupCVS >, or from a CVS Snapshot < http://www.freeciv.org/latest.html >.) *Lots of bug fixes, code cleanups, and help-text improvements. 1.9.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.8.1: *Internationalization added. Some aspects still need improvement, and in particular currently only works well if client and server both use the same language. Initial (partial) translations included are: de es fr hu pl pt pt_BR. *Improvements to "trident" tileset, and this set is now the default. *New ruleset support for NATIONS, and many new nations added -- there are now 32 nations in the default nations file. Also allow multiple leaders choices for each nation, allow longer player names, and allow specifying/choosing sex of leader. *New ruleset support for TERRAIN, and changes to allow Civ2 style terrain with more specials, multi-terrain rivers, and new farmland infrastructure. Moved some server options into terrain ruleset, and added new rule option regarding movement along rivers. *New ruleset support for GOVERNMENTS, and more general unit upkeep. *The contents and layout of the graphics files is now described in user-editable 'spec' files, instead of being hardwired into the code; see README.graphics for details. *Changes to city graphics: can now see cities grow. Also, code support for different city styles for different nations, and for technology dependent styles, but lacking good graphics except for the default style. Cities show a small flag when occupied by one or more units. *From Civ2, added Paratroopers unit and Airbase infrastructure. *Initial window size of Gtk+ client is smaller, to fit better on smaller screens, and can now resize detached chat/output window. *City report enhancements: New "Change All" dialog to convert all production of a given item to some other item (both clients); can select multiple cities and issue commands (Gtk+ client only); can sort by different columns (Gtk+ client only). Can also select multiple items in the Trade Report (Gtk+ client only). *In Civ2 style, can select which infrastructure item to pillage, and multiple units can pillage together. Can now pillage fortresses, as well as new farmland and airbase infrastructure items. *More fields added to Demographics Report, and now configurable from a server option. *Added more information to "Active Units Report", and renamed to "Military Report". *New cursors added for Goto, Nuke and Paradrop modes; < Escape > key cancels Go-To/Paradrop/nuke mode; pollution on city squares is now always clearly visible; improvements to refresh method for pixmaps in Gtk+ client; various other improvements to both clients. *Autosettlers no longer convert Plains/Grasslands to Forests, but will now Transform terrain. *AI can build spaceships, although does not do so very aggressively or intelligently yet. *Server and client may specify a different metaserver to use. There is now a metaserver running on www.freeciv.org, and that is now the default metaserver (http://www.freeciv.org/metaserver). *New server option for "turn blocking" mode, in which players will never miss a turn even if sometimes disconnected. *More flexible rulesets for units and techs (advances) allowing variable number of items in each (up to 200) and no longer any techs with hardwired effects depending on position in ruleset file. *Appropriate helptext now appears in ruleset files, allowing modpacks to give modified help to correspond to modified items. *Format of ruleset files is changed, no longer compatible with those for 1.8.0 and 1.8.1. *Removed science bonus of +1 per city per turn. *In Civ2 mode, overflight of a hut causes it to disappear, and can't build cities next to each other. *Rapture_size now 3, to conform to Civ2. *Settlers and Engineers now cost shield upkeep as well as food upkeep (depending on government type) as in both Civ1 and Civ2. *Helicopters do not lose hitpoints when over an airbase. *The amount of food required for a city grow is now ((citysize+1) * foodbox), instead of (citysize * foodbox); new behavior matches both Civ1 and Civ2. *Some re-organization of data directory, in adding data/scenario, and graphics now in data/trident, data/engels and data/misc. *Preliminary support for compiling the server on Mac (but networking code not yet ported). *Progressively moving code out of client gui-dependent directories. *Lots of bug fixes, code cleanups, and help-text improvements. 1.8.1 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.8.0: *The biggest change is a new client which uses the popular Gtk+ toolkit. The old Xaw client is still included as well. *A new alternate (30x30) tileset: the "trident" tileset. Start the client with "--tiles trident" to try it out. (This replaces the "classic/brunus" tileset, which is still available separately from the Freeciv ftp site.) *In the Gtk+ client, parts of the main window can be detached. Detaching them all allows a full-screen map window! *The data directory can now be specified as a "path" ($FREECIV_PATH), instead of a single directory. By default, ~/.freeciv is now in the path, so if you download new tiles, modpacks, etc, you can now simply put them in ~/.freeciv *Server console improvements: can abbreviate server command names, and server option names. Better prompt handling*eg, server no longer prints an unnecessary prompt each turn. *Server commands can now be issued from the client chatline. There is a new server command "cmdlevel", to control access to this feature on a per-player basis. *Some of the "small" graphics have been improved. *Added a nice cursor for selecting the destination for "goto". *New column "corruption" in the city report. *Implemented Marco Polo's Embassy wonder. *New command to explode Nuclear units at an empty square. *Improved behavior of Caravans and "goto": the Caravan dialog will now popup when the Caravan arrives, whether moving by goto or by the keyboard. *Allow connecting to metaserver (in client) via $http_proxy. *Minor "Zone of Control" (ZOC) rules changes to better match Civ2. *Improved debug logging. *Server will refuse to run as root, as a security measure. *As always: lots of bug fixes, code cleanups, and help-text improvements. 1.8.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.7.2: *Space race! Be the first player to build a space ship and colonize Alpha Centauri. *Civil war! Capturing the enemy capital may split his empire. Half of his towns will join a new AI leader! *Two tile sets in this release! The "big" ones are from Ralph Engels. I hope you will enjoy them. The second set is an enhancement of the classic ones. The server option -tiles allows to choose a subdirectory of the data directory to use different tiles. (The data directory can be set with the DATADIR environment variable.) Also, diagonal roads and railroads are now drawn. Changed some of the national flags (especially changed Soviet flag to the Russian flag for Russians). *Rulesets can be used to customise units, advances, wonders, and improvements without recompiling -- see README.rulesets. *Units in a town can be put in auto-attack mode. In this mode, they will attack any enemy units which come nearby. *New city options for each city, controlling whether new citizens are workers or specialists, whether to allow disbanding a size 1 city by building a settler, and options for units on auto-attack mode in the city. *Mapgen 4 (selected with the server command "set generator 4") is a new map generator which generates a map with 2 players on each island. *Cities can be a traded in diplomatic treaties. This effectively allows you to exchange, sell or buy cities. *The AI now builds diplomats to defend against enemy diplomats. *Settlers and engineers can do teamwork. With enough manpower, all terrain improvements can be done fast! *With engineers, the terrain type can be changed using the new Transform command ('O'). For example, hills can be turned into plains. *Units only regenerate hit points if they have not moved at all for a full turn. *Gamelog option. The whole history of a game can be stored in the gamelog file. *One can select a unit with 0 moves left from the main map. *City workers can be adjusted from the main map, with shift+button1. *Changed the order of libraries to fix problems on IRIX and Cygwin. *Changed the client-server protocol to use network byte order. *Other bug fixes and code and help text cleanups. 1.7.2 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.7.1: *Improvements to the configure script, so it should now work properly on all systems. *Ability to configure to use Xaw3d instead of the normal Xaw. *New "easy" AI mode, which is now the default. *Improved "City Report" dialog, with configurable columns. *Improved "Message Options" dialog, with customizable filtering and selection for the different message types. *Improved "Messages" dialog, with a scrollbar, and a "Popup City" button. *Improved multi-column "Unit Select" dialog when there are lots of units. *In city dialog, middle-click unit icons to "activate and close". *New client command "t" to show tiles used by city under mouse. *New metaserver dialog to make connecting to metaserver games easier. *Ability to save and re-load client settings. *Clearer Yes/No toggle buttons in various places in the client. *Reduced color usage (but looks almost identical), so the client should now work fine on systems with 8 bit color displays. *Ability to use "scenarios", that is, pre-designed maps. Scenarios for Earth and Europe games are included in the data directory. (Use them with the server command-line option -f, like savegames.) *More city names, so you're less likely to see "City 41" etc. *Saving large games is now much faster, and the savefile is smaller. *Improvements to the documentation and online help system, including a new help section on the "Zones of Control" game concept. *Detect repeated log messages and print repeat counts. *New server options randseed and aqueductloss. *Many other enhancements and bug fixes. 1.7.1 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.7.0: *Removed two C++-style comments, the most reported problem with 1.7.0! *Tweaks to the configure script for Solaris, although it's still not perfect. *Spy and diplomat improvements. *Added the "W" command, which Wakes up sentried units. *Added the "scorelog" command, which can be read by a script to generate power graphs after the game. *Loading games is now MUCH faster. *AI improvements from John Stonebraker. *Visual improvements to dialogs and the map screen. *Settlers may not fortify. *Numerous bug fixes. 1.7.0 WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.6.3: *Massive AI changes. It plays smarter, and the AI uses seagoing vessels. *The contents of the help system have been improved substantially. *Many bugs fixed. *We now recommend you use "configure" instead of Imake. *Settlers have a new "e"xplore mode. *The makefiles now contain auto-generated dependency information. *Units within the radius of the city to which they belong no longer cause unhappiness. This will allow much more realistic defense scenarios. *The tax/lux/sci rates are now limited by your government type. Also, they can modified by clicking on the rate status icons. *The behaviour of spies and diplomats has been greatly improved. *Freeciv now needs to transmit a lot less data (< 25%!) when playing over the Internet. This will greatly speed up games. *Preliminary support for compiling Freeciv under Windows and OS/2, when used in conjunction with the GNU tools. *From now on, it will be possible for different Freeciv versions to talk to each other if they're able. *Tracy Reed (who provides www.freeciv.org) reports that our site is getting over 6,000 hits per month. He was quoted as saying "Cool! Now my computer is doing something!" *Lots, and Lots, and Lots of donated patches. Thanks guys, keep 'em coming!